|
The South Yemen Civil War, colloquially referred to as The Events of '86, or more simply as The Events, was a failed coup d'etat and armed conflict which took place in January 1986 in South Yemen. The civil war developed as a result of ideological and tribal tensions between two factions of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), centred on Abdul Fattah Ismail and Ali Nasir Muhammad for the leadership of the YSP. The conflict quickly escalated into a costly civil war of about half a month long, which resulted in thousands of casualties. Additionally, the conflict resulted in the demise of much of the Yemeni Socialist Party's most experienced leadership cadre, contributing to the country's eventual unification with North Yemen in 1990. ==Background== Following the end of the Aden Emergency and the achievement of South Yemeni independence in 1967, the National Liberation Front (NLF) was handed power over the country following negotiations with the British government in Geneva. A broadly left-wing nationalist insurgent organization, the NLF had sought to unite the forces of the Aden petroleum and port workers' trade unions, Nasserites, and Communists. The last of these factions was led by Abdul Fattah Ismail, a founding member of the NLF and its chief Marxist ideologue. During the Emergency, Ismail had led the armed cadres of the NLF in Aden, and was supported by many of the insurgents who had seen action against the British. In 1969, with support from the Soviet Union, Ismail used this popularity among the nascent South Yemeni army to seize control of the NLF, and in June he was declared its General Secretary. Ismail pursued aggressive and revolutionary domestic and foreign policies. At home, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen adopted a Marxist-Leninist scientific socialism as the official state ideology. All major industries were nationalized and collectivized, universal suffrage was implemented, and a quasi-cult of personality was developed around Ismail and the NLF, renamed the Yemeni Socialist Party in 1978. His government helped establish Marxist paramilitary organizations around the Arabian Peninsula, PFLOAG and PFLO, which used political activism and violence to campaign against the Western-aligned Arab monarchies on the Persian Gulf. Under Ismail, South Yemen gave its most direct support to the later of these two groups during the Dhofar Rebellion in neighbouring Oman, providing advisors to the insurgent forces there, in addition to ensuring the transit of Warsaw Pact and Chinese weapons to the rebels. He also encouraged Communist guerrillas in North Yemen, seeking to destabilize the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh and bring about Yemeni unification under a Communist government based in the South. This antagonism toward the North would stoke tensions between the two Yemens, eventually culminating in a brief series of border skirmishes in 1972. Following the failure of the insurgency in Oman in 1978 and simmering hostilities with North Yemen, Ismail had lost favour with much of the Yemeni Socialist Party's rank and file and alienated his country from much of the region and the West. This, combined with Ismail's economic policies had devastated the small nation's standard of living. The Soviet Union, upon which South Yemen relied for the vast majority of its trade and financial aid, had also lost confidence in the General Secretary, policymakers within the Brezhnev administration regarding him as a loose cannon and a liability. As a result, Moscow began to encourage moderates within the YSP to remove him from power. In 1980, believing that his political rivals within the YSP were preparing to assassinate him, Ismail resigned and went into exile. His successor, Ali Nasir Muhammad, took a less interventionist stance toward both North Yemen and neighbouring Oman. The Yemeni Socialist Party was increasingly polarised between Ismail's supporters, who espoused a hard-line leftist ideology, and those of Ali Nasir Muhammad who espoused more pragmatic domestic policies and friendlier relations with other Arab states and the West. On June 1985, the YSP politburo adopted a resolution stating that anyone who resorted to violence in settling internal political disputes is considered a criminal and a betrayer of the homeland. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「South Yemen Civil War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|